If you’re a fitness coach who wants to quit the gym floor, work fully online, and hit consistent £3,000 to £5,000 months, then your Instagram profile might be the thing quietly killing your chances before you even get started.
I know how it feels when you’re up at 5 am, on the gym floor all day, trading time for money and slowly hitting a ceiling. You’ve probably already thought about going online, maybe even tried it, but it fell flat, and you couldn’t figure out why.
Well, I’m going to reveal to you one reason why some coaches struggle to grow their online coaching business.
Their Instagram profile is turning people off before they’ve even read a word of their content.
I’ve audited a lot of Instagram accounts for online coaches, and it’s something we regularly discuss inside Online Trainer Education. What strikes me is that the same mistakes kept showing up. And every single one of them was costing these coaches, clients.
Here’s exactly what I found and how they can easily be fixed.
Profile number one belongs to Lauren Matthews. There are a few things working in her favour here. Her full name is visible, which is important because the two parts of an Instagram profile that are actually searchable are your handle and the bold name field that sits just beneath your profile picture.
You want your full name in at least one of those two places, and Lauren has done that well.
But some clear things are holding this profile back. The profile picture is a gym selfie, and it’s a little blurry.
It doesn’t give off the warm, approachable impression that draws people in.
The best performing profile photos we see consistently are lifestyle images taken outside of the gym, where the coach is looking directly at the camera and looking like someone you’d actually want to spend time with. A holiday photo, a night out, a wedding.
Something that shows there’s a real person behind the account. The bio is also sending mixed messages. If you’re trying to build an online coaching business, your Instagram should be entirely focused on that.
Having the gym you work at tagged in your bio is actively sending your hard-earned visitors over to someone else’s page.
Every person who clicks that link is a person you’ve just gifted to another account.
On top of that, the Linktree needs to go. When people see a Linktree URL, they immediately assume it’s going to be a graveyard of outdated links and discount codes for protein powder.
Replace it with one single link to a clean pre-application form and send people exactly where you want them to go.
Profile number two is Adam Maxted, and this one is a different conversation entirely.
Adam has over 200,000 followers, so I’m not here to give him growth advice. But from a pure conversion standpoint, there are still opportunities being missed.
The profile picture and the active stories are both excellent. He’s verified, which I’d actually recommend for any coach taking their business seriously.
For around £10 a month, Instagram verification gives you a direct line to Meta support if your account ever gets hacked. Think of it less as a status symbol and more as business insurance.
Where things could improve is in how the bio is being used. The location, Manchester, isn’t relevant for an online coaching business because your potential clients could be anywhere in the world.
That prime real estate in the bio would be far better used for what I call the Bold Promise. The format is straightforward: who do you help, what do you help them achieve, and what’s the thing they won’t have to sacrifice to get there.
For example, mine might read something like: I help personal trainers leave the gym floor and hit £3,000 to £5,000 per month without needing a huge Instagram following.
That’s the kind of statement that makes the right person stop scrolling immediately.
The call to action also needs sharpening. It currently points to online coaching, but people don’t actually want online coaching. They want the result that online coaching delivers.
Your CTA should speak to the outcome, whether that’s dropping a dress size, shaving minutes off a 10K, or building their first consistent income online. Lead with what they want, not what you’re selling.
Profile number three is Henry Barlow, and this one is a really common example of a coach who has clearly put effort in, but is filling the bio with the wrong things entirely.
The profile picture is a bodybuilding stage shot. For a general population audience, this is intimidating rather than inviting. It signals that this coach works with elite athletes, not everyday people who want to feel better and look better.
A lifestyle image would serve him far better here.
Then there’s the bio itself, which lists his BSc in Human Nutrition, his Association for Nutrition membership, his natural bodybuilder status and his PCA Muscle Model title.
Here’s the hard truth about all of that… nobody cares.
Not because those achievements aren’t real or impressive, but because the person landing on your profile is thinking about themselves, not you. They want to know what’s in it for them. All of those credentials can come through in your content over time.
They don’t belong in the handful of lines you have to make a first impression.
Replace the qualifications with a Bold Promise. Make it about the person reading it, not the person writing it.
Profile number four is Kellie Whiteman, and there’s quite a bit to work through here.
The first thing that stands out is the profile picture, which is a business logo. Unless you’re Nike, Apple or Gucci, a logo as your profile picture will always underperform a photo of a real human face.
I’ve seen this play out not just across the thousands of coaches we’ve worked with at Online Trainer Education, but in my own business, too.
When I ran my first online fitness brand alongside a business partner, we had our personal accounts, and we had the branded business account, which actually had more content and a more polished look.
Over twelve months, that branded account grew the slowest and generated roughly 15% of the clients our personal accounts did. People buy from people.
A clear, warm photo of you will always win.
The handle is also worth addressing. Using a business name like empower_fitness_pt means that if someone sees you tagged in a story and they’re not actively looking for a PT right now, they’ll scroll straight past.
A personal name handle creates curiosity. Someone sees your name tagged and thinks, “Who is that?” gets them to click. Now you have a chance.
The bio also needs the Bold Promise treatment, and the location should be removed entirely, given that online coaching has no geographical limits.
Profile number five is Harry Lightfoot, and this one is actually the closest to being right out of all five. He has active stories running, he’s using his name field well, and he’s done something that nobody else in this audit did, which is point his link to one single destination rather than a Linktree.
That alone puts him ahead of most coaches I see.
The profile picture is a gym photo and could be more lifestyle-oriented, but the bio is genuinely working.
He’s used the name field to establish himself as a Body Transformation Expert, which immediately tells you something useful, and the copy in the bio is focused on the person reading it rather than on him.
The call to action, ready to change, is outcome-oriented, which is exactly the right approach. It could be sharpened slightly, something like ready to finally start seeing change, but the foundations are solid.
The fixes here are minor compared to the other profiles. Swap the profile picture, tighten the bio copy to be a little more specific about who he helps, and this profile is in a strong place.
So What Does a Strong Profile Actually Look Like?
After auditing hundreds of profiles through Online Trainer Education, the formula that consistently works is this.
A high-quality lifestyle photo where you’re looking at the camera and looking approachable. Active stories running every single day.
A personal name handle with no job titles or fitness labels attached.
Keywords in your searchable name field to help the right people find you.
A Bold Promise in your bio that speaks directly to your ideal client’s desired outcome.
A call to action that leads with the result, not the product.
And one single link to a pre-application form, nothing else.
None of this is complicated or costs money. It’s just clean, clear positioning that tells the right person exactly why they should follow you and exactly what to do next.
The profile is the starting point. Get it right, and everything that follows, your content, your conversations, your sales, all of it gets easier.
If you want to go further than the profile and build a full online coaching business that gives you real freedom over your time, your income and your life, that’s exactly what we help coaches do at Online Trainer Education.
We’ve helped over 3,500 coaches and trainers escape the gym floor, go fully online, and build businesses hitting consistent £3k, £5k and £10k months, without a huge following, without paid ads, and without hard-sell sales tactics.
The profile is just the first step. If you’re ready to find out what comes next, click on “Free Training” at the top of the website.
